An assessment of the challenges faced by the risk management unit in the public sector: the case of the Eastern Cape department of basic education

The main purpose of the study was to assess the challenges faced by the risk management of the Department of Basic Education in the Eastern Cape Province. The study revealed that the department is faced with challenges ranging from: Poor internal controls, lack of appropriate capacity, non-compliance with management policies, high rate of employment, ineffective performance from the managers and there were no punitive measures applied, no adequate systems in place to identify and disclose irregularities and highly distributed structure where the department failed to demarcate its districts as per local government demarcation. From the analysis of the study, the study reveals that the following legislative frameworks were used in order for risk management in the Department to be performed in an effectively and efficiently manner but the Department failed to receive a positive audit outcome. Just to mention the few are as follow: Public Finance Management Act (Act 1 of 1999), Treasury Regulations, The Constitution of the Country and Risk Management Framework. The Department must speed up the finalization of its organizational structure so as to hire required staff for all sections, speed up the cleaning of data in schools, learners and personnel. It must improve efficiency and effectiveness of systems, process and procedures to achieve a better audit outcome. Training and capacitation of staff must be number one in their agenda. Ensure that systems are in place and have punitive measures to employees who contravene Treasury Regulations. The Department’s plan to reduce the number of districts in the near future must be speed up so as to assist the Department in addressing effective controls, accountability and monitoring